Prep Day

About once every two or three weeks, I try to have a prep day. I'd like to say that I have a prep day EVERY week, but that just doesn't seem to happen. Prep Day is a day when I go through my pantry and look at the mixes that I keep (homeade shake and bake, biscuit mix, cornbread mixes, rice mixes, seasoning mixes, etc) and see if there is anything I am low on.

I also spend that time in the kitchen making baked goods of doubled or tripled recipes. We can eat from this days baking and also freeze some for next week.

It's also a good time to work on things that slow cook. Or I will put together meals for the freezer, a couple of lasagna's or chicken cacciatore's.

I try to time my prep days for a day after grocery shopping. That way if I find a good sale on something like chicken quarters I can process them on my prep day. It's also a good time for chopping vegetables and getting things ready to make mealtimes easier.

This week I baked three batches of orange muffins and two doubled recipe batches of chocolate chip cookies (without the chocolate chips...I know, it's weird but husband and daughter don't like chocolate but love the cookie part, so I do it that way once in a while for them.)

I also put together my mixes that I was short on. I made a large jar of homeade Shake and Bake (which will do us about three or four times), my regular house seasoning mix (two parts salt, one part garlic powder, one part black pepper) I just put that together in a shaker and use it very often as I'm cooking.

This whole process took up just a small portion of my day and I enjoyed listening to one of my favorite radio programs while I worked.

I intended to have pictures of this for you, since I finally got my camera back this weekend, but NOT having batteries for it DOESN'T work for me. So I'll just do that next time.

What DOES work for me though, is having these things done and ready when I need them by spending a few minutes in the kitchen once every couple of weeks. What works for you?

To see what works for other people on the blogosphere please check out We Are That Family for more Works For Me Wednesday.